I prayed it was a happier scene than right here.
"You dishonour your name," Chew-wen snarled from across the room.
"Father," Wang Chao started.
"Silence!" the Chief Overseer boomed. For such a compact man he had great presence. "I wish to see what Selena has to say for herself, before I condemn her friends to be wiped."
"I didn't mean it," I whispered, contrition my only avenue of escape. My stomach twisted, acidic bile churning and churning and churning deep down inside. My heart shrivelled at what I was now going to have to do to put this right.
I moved away from Aiko and Tan; distance would hopefully help in Chew-wen forgetting that they were even there. I prostrated myself before the General, on my knees, forehead pressed into cool marble tiles, arms outstretched.
"My apologies, Chief Overseer," I offered. "I have forgotten myself."
"See, Father," Wang Chao offered, moving to stand right beside my lowered shoulder. "Selena is contrite."
"You think an admission of regret will suffice?"
"Father, she is my betrothed," Wang Chao pleaded. A part of me was surprised at the effort he was expending.
Another part of me not caring, because I had greater woes.
"And she avoids wiping because of it," Chew-wen acknowledged. "But not a lesson that must be learned."
My head came up enough to see Chew-wen motion toward a drone on his left. I watched as the sPol walked towards Aiko and Tan, willing myself to remain quiet for my own good, praying his approach didn't mean what I thought it did. My body shook with fear, with the knowledge that I had to watch, do nothing, or face that fate myself. But it wasn't courage that kept me immobile. It was regrettably utter terror.
The drone paused, a foot away from their slumped forms, and then flicked his wrist, activating his firing laser.
I was up and off the floor before I comprehended I'd even moved, flinging myself at the drone, pushing him sideways with the force I'd used to attack him. I was unarmed, a mere human battering a metal machine.
"Please don't do this!" I pleaded with the Cardinal who controlled it. "Please, they have done no wrong."
It wasn't the Cardinal who controlled the machine who answered. It wasn't even the drone itself.
But Shiloh.
I blinked in confusion as the drone - with Shiloh's voice - announced, "Test failure," in the exact same way that Shiloh had declared I'd failed my test at the beginning of the night.
In the exact same voice Shiloh always used, whether that was at home, on the Rap-Trans, or an iRec machine. The exact same voice heard in so many different places in Wánměi. But something made me stop, take a step back, and stare at the drone as though I'd never seen one before.
"You like my drones, Selena?" General Chew-wen asked, seeing my reaction to Shiloh's voice.
"Where's the Cardinal who controls it?" I asked, my words shaky, but I wasn't entirely sure why. Too many reasons to be alarmed. Too many reasons to fear for my life.
"Shiloh doesn't need a Cardinal," Wang Chao offered, in an effort, I think, to steer the conversation to what he saw as safer ground. "She has come a long way since the early days, toétèi."
I flicked a glance towards him and he took the opportunity to move closer to my side. His gloved hand wrapped around mine in a show of solidarity I should have been happy to accept. But it took effort not to tug it free. Effort I sorely lacked right now.
"Things are changing, Selena," Chew-wen advised. "We're entering an exciting phase for Wánměi. Exactly what your father desired."
How dare he mention my father. How dare he bring him up now.
"You have a place right at the top, my dear," he continued. "A place of prominence and privilege, but with it will come responsibility."
"Together we'll show Wánměi the way, toétèi," Wang Chao declared, looking more and more relaxed as the General's attention moved from Aiko and Tan.
It wasn't because Wang Chao wanted to save them. It was purely because he wanted to save his promised wife. I didn't deserve his dedication. I didn't even want it.
"But," Chew-wen added, making my gaze flick to his and Wang Chao to stiffen at my side. "Your behaviour of late has been questionable. Has it not?"
"They are just friends," I whispered, not daring to look at Aiko or Tan for fear the General would follow my gaze. I willed his attention to remain on me.
"Not just these Citizens, Selena," he remarked. "Perhaps I could have overlooked this strange need of yours to offer aid to the lower classes. I had hoped this penchant for mixing with the Citizen caste only went so far as your voluntary work. But you have crossed a line, child. A line I simply cannot ignore."
What line? Did he know about the rebels? Did he know I'd brought their leader here tonight?
"I am surprised," he continued, moving to a chair and taking a seat.
The action was purposeful. A relaxed pose while he delivered the sentence to my crimes. Wang Chao sensed it too. The warmth of his body reaching me as he shifted closer still to my side.
"Your latest hobby is a very dangerous one," Chew-wen advised. "But I think, maybe, that you don't realise you've been fooled."
"Fooled?" I asked, unable to stop the word from forming. I felt on a precipice here, teetering and about to fall off. And I could feel Chew-wen's hand getting closer, right before he pushed between my shoulder blades, encouraging me to take that fateful step.
"Your guest tonight," he added, and I realised he did know. I swallowed under his intent gaze, the browns of his eyes all but gone, just a murky, bleak black staring me down like a vicious crow. "Do you know who he is?"
"Citizen Trent Masters," I supplied, because there was no point hiding that. He'd been iRec'd at the front door to Ohrikee, passed his test and Chew-wen would know.
"Interesting what a blood sample will tell us," the General mused, tapping his finger nonchalantly on the armrest of his chair. He held up his free hand and a drone stepped froward from behind him, placing a sheet of paper in his outstretched palm and then disappearing into the shadows again.
The move so smooth, so silent, and somehow so threatening.
"Shiloh offered to analyse it for us," Chew-wen announced. His eyes met Wang Chao's for a brief moment as he said, "She is aiding us now in ways we hadn't even considered."
"Yes, Father," he dutifully replied. "A true credit to Wánměi." The words were rote, just like so many I had been forced to say in the past. And I realised, despite acknowledging the lengths Wang Chao would go to, just like his father, to effect his endgame, he was also constrained by our society.
If only he was strong enough to see that and fight back. What could he achieve at General Chew-wen's right hand?
The thought was dismissed as soon as it entered my head. There would be no more rebellion tonight.
"The blood sample," Chew-wen continued, holding the piece of paper up and waving it like a battalion flag. "Your Citizen is not who you think he is."
I blinked, but held his stare, not willing to ask the question he so obviously wanted on my lips. Who Trent was wouldn't be irrelevant, I knew this, but with Aiko and Tan's lives still hanging in the balance, I realised Chew-wen's revelation was only part of my upcoming battles tonight.
And a part of me simply couldn't take any more.
The need to look towards my dearest friends and make sure they were OK was almost too much to bear. But no drones had moved, and for now I had to take that as meaning they were still there, still alive, even if their minds had long left.
How much Serenity had they given them? Aiko had taken a Tab recently, she shouldn't have been overly affected by another ration dose. But I wasn't so sure about Tan. Had he just been replicating, or had he, like Aiko, been forced to dose up as well? It didn't matter, they were both zombies to their fix. Despite being ration dosed recently or not, they were now beyond a normal high, more complacent than I had ever seen.
It broke my heart. It made it difficult to swallow past the lump in
my throat. It made the threat of tears real. It made it impossible to think past their plight and focus on General Chew-wen's words.
And as much as I wanted to believe I'd think of something to get us out of here, I was beginning to doubt. And with doubt came defeat. My body weary, my heart heavy, my mind shutting down and unable to come up with a solution to save even myself. Let alone them.
"You're not going to ask?" Chew-wen said softly. Forcing me to finally focus on what I'd futilely been trying to ignore. "Or you don't care?"
Yes, that was the answer. To not care.
"He is a recent acquaintance, General," I offered. "I thought he held potential, but clearly not." I waved a hand in an Elite dismissal. More for Trent's existence than for General Chew-wen.
He started laughing, it was ominous in its lack of humour.
"My dear, Honourable Carstairs," he said. "How hard you try to convince me he means nothing at all. But," he added, shifting forward in his seat with sudden eagerness, "perhaps you can pay him back for his deceit."
"Perhaps," I murmured, not liking where this was going. Even though I wasn't sure exactly where.
"Do you remember," the General suddenly said, sitting back in his chair leisurely, "when your father died?"
What a question.
"Of course," I managed to say.
"He saved my life," he added, and for a moment the man who had laughed with my father at the dining room table late at night reappeared.
And then was quickly replaced with the tyrant.
"I watched him die defending me," Chew-wen said heatedly, his eyes holding mine while he paused.
It was the pause that should have warned me. Not the look of intensity, nor the trip down memory lane. But his timing.
"The man who killed him was called Mason Waters."
Another pause.
"He had a son."
Oh, no. I couldn't do this. But I didn't have a choice.
He held up the sheet of paper in his hand. The blood sample tested by Shiloh.
"His DNA matches your Citizen's," he declared, allowing the paper to flutter towards me, until it rested at my feet. "Read it," he encouraged, his tone almost softening. "Wang Chao," he added, proving how deceptive a tone of voice could be. "Read it to your bride."
I watched, frozen in place, as Wang Chao leaned down and lifted the paper up, taking his time digesting the words. His body began to shake with pent up rage, then his hand fisted around the suddenly crushed paper. And he threw it at the closest wall.
"I had him," he growled. "Right in front of me at an iRec." The one on Elliott Street. And the one in Ohrikee earlier tonight.
But I didn't have emotion to spare on the fear that Wang Chao would divulge why and where he'd seen Trent that first time. I was too torn with what I had just learned.
I walked stiffly over to the balled up piece of paper and painstakingly pressed it flat against the bodice of my dress. My eyes blindly staring at a painting before me, my back to the angry words Wang Chao was extolling behind me. General Chew-wen silent through it all.
I forced myself to read it. To confirm what I already knew in my heart.
Trent Masters' DNA inheritance markers confirmed probability of a 99.9% paternity match to Mason Waters.
The former leader of the revolutionaries.
The man who had killed my father.
"Well?" Chew-wen asked, as though I hadn't just spent the past few days staring into eyes similar to the last my father had ever seen. "What is your answer?"
Had he asked a question?
I turned back to face him, the paper crumpled now in my fist and not Wang Chao's. I tilted my chin, lifted my shining eyes to his hard façade, and became the Elite my father had wanted me to be.
"Of course I will assist you, General Chew-wen."
Chapter 39
For A Second I Wondered If Anything Had Happened
Trent
I couldn't believe my ears. But then, I shouldn't have been surprised at all. Lena had been betrothed to Cardinal Chew-wen Wang Chao all along, and still she had kissed me. Like all Elite, she'd simply been doing what she needed to do to survive. To stay on top. To not admit defeat.
Which made me wonder if that was what she was doing now. But I dismissed the idea as I watched Wang Chao wrap an arm around her shoulders and lay a kiss in amongst her hair, relief and pride mixing on his austere face. She didn't pull away.
But then she didn't lean into him either.
Damn it. Why was I still defending her when she'd just agreed to hand me over to Chew-wen?
"I have a condition, of course," she declared, after the men had stopped thumping their own backs.
"A what?" Wang Chao inarticulately asked, as Chew-wen said, "I hardly think you in a position to ask favours."
"But of course, General," Lena purred, making Alan cover a snort off to my side. I glared at him, but he only shrugged his shoulders, a darker shadow in the dark recesses of the room.
The signal hadn't come through from Si yet, we were biding our time while we watched our lives being sold out by an Elite we'd willingly allowed into the safety of the hub.
Of course, responsibility for that all lay at my feet.
"You require my help to contain the rebels. I'm inclined to agree with their cause right now," she admitted, and I stupidly felt my lips spreading in a triumphant smile.
"Admitting that hardly aids you," Chew-wen advised.
"I have no doubt," she replied pleasantly, Elite mannerisms in full swing, "that my freedom no longer exists."
Chew-wen slowly acknowledged that point with a nod of his head.
"The threats you hold over me are ones I cannot counter," she added, and my eyes slid to the forms of Aiko and Lee Tan, barely conscious on the floor.
Everything she did, she did for them, I realised. The last of what she considered her family.
I wondered if we could save them, but chances were we wouldn't be able to save ourselves.
"Go on," Chew-wen encouraged.
"Keep them alive and I'll co-operate," she advised, and I swear there was a scratch in her throat, a roughness to the usually velvety smooth tone of her voice.
"I can wipe them after the fact," he pointed out.
She offered a small smile.
"But you'll never know just how much I have uncovered," she whispered.
Chew-wen leaned forward in his chair. "You have met more of them than just Masters?"
"Perhaps."
Oh, this was bad. A part of me had hoped she'd just sink me and leave the rest, but the news I was the son of the man who killed her father clearly had cut her deep. She was out for revenge. My father had taken everything from her, left her alone. I had a terrible suspicion she was about to do the same to me.
Chew-wen's eyes met those of his son. A silent message passed between them. I couldn't see Wang Chao's reaction, but his back stiffened, his fists clenched. And then he nodded his head, accepting whatever nefarious task his father had set him.
"Very well, Honourable Selena Carstairs," Chew-wen replied. "We'll see just how long you last."
He stood then and panic seized me. I flicked a worried glance at Alan who pressed a hand to the side of his head, murmuring an update to Si through the earpiece.
Time seemed to stall as I watched Wang Chao wrap a firm hand around Lena's upper arm, like he had when they first stormed in here after General Chew-wen. He started to drag her towards a door at the back of the room, drones parting to allow them access.
Selena called out to her friends on the floor, but they didn't respond. Not even a sound as drones picked them up and began to move them to another door.
"What are you doing?" she demanded.
"They will live," Chew-wen announced. "As long as you cooperate." But there was an ominous threat in his tone that didn't match the reassuring words. Again his eyes flicked to his son's, but this time I could see Wang Chao's face.
Stoic, determined, angry, and full of regret.
<
br /> "Oh, fuck," I whispered, and Alan raised his hand, fingers outstretched.
I alternated between watching Lena get dragged off to her fate and Alan as he counted down silently, lowering fingers to match the second hands on a clock.
Wang Chao reached the back door to the room, just as Chew-wen's drones opened the main exit for the Chief Overseer. And Alan's last finger came down.
For a second I wondered if anything had happened.
And then all hell broke loose, and my world came tumbling down.
Chapter 40
And I'd Never Felt So Lost Before
Lena
I didn't want to think of what Chew-wen had ordered his son to do to me. I only knew Wang Chao was beside himself having to follow the command.
It did nothing to ease my mind that his instructions upset him. The feeling of being trapped had escalated to one of being held at gunpoint and staring at my imminent death.
Not that death was going to be an option for me. But there are worse things than death, I've been told.
A crackle sounded out over the nearest drone's radio, a sound I realised I hadn't heard all night. Most drones communicated via the old school sounding radio channels. Tonight I had heard only drones themselves and their Shiloh units, nothing else.
But this crackle preceded a barked radio command, clearly coming from off site and not at the Palace.
"We have them!" a Cardinal exclaimed, his informal language proving he was human and not machine. "An address in Rahee. No, correction," he added, excitement making his words tumble one over the other. "Make that Tehteh. They're at Tehteh. Repeat: Rebel base at Tehteh."
Oh, no.
The whole room stopped. Wang Chao's grip on my arm weakening, the drones nearest us buzzing in a way I had never seen nor heard before now.
"The file?" Wang Chao asked, my eyes flicked up to his face and then just as swiftly to his father's across the room.
"I told you they had it."
Yes, they did. Because of me.
"You'd think they would have suspected the trap," Wang Chao offered.
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